Friday / July 16, 2021

Have you ever wondered why SAP, Apple, American Express and Bridgewater Associates have always remained at the top of their game? Whilst they’re standouts in their respective industries, they share one more thing in common: they nurture top-to-bottom learning cultures. The research linking learning to business success is compelling.
“Companies that learn fastest and adapt well to changing environments perform the best over time,” says Edward Hess, a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and author of ‘Learn or Die: Using Science to Build a Leading-Edge Learning Organization’ (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2014).

Some jobs are disappearing in the face of rapidly advancing technologies and automation, and the positions that are opening up or remain open, call for quick thinking, creativity, and high social and emotional intelligence, making the ability to learn more important than ever. Companies with nimble learners can respond quickly to disruptions, adapt to meet the demands of an evolving business climate, and harness a wealth of ideas for new products, services, and processes.

What’s a Learning Culture?

A culture of learning, or learning culture, is one in which employees continuously seek, share, and apply new knowledge and skills to improve individual and organisational performance. The importance of the pursuit and application of learning is embodied in organisational values and infuses all aspects of organisational life.

Characteristics that define learning cultures can vary widely between different organisations, but talent development leaders describe such essential traits as closely aligned business and learning strategies, organisational values that emphasise the importance of learning, and an atmosphere in which learning is so ingrained and so championed that it simply becomes “a way of life.” In such organisations, agility is more palpable, and change is not only deliberately embraced but also exploited, while employees cultivate growth mindsets and seek out fresh opportunities to learn and share knowledge with their colleagues.

Benefits of a Learning Culture

A learning culture produces significant benefits that serve to boost the personal growth of individuals in terms of skill development and knowledge accumulation which help in their career advancement; by extension, it also serves to develop the collective skill and knowledge base of the organisation, which can help the organisation to enhance its overall performance and develop the business further in multiple ways.

• Boosts employee morale and motivation

Employees respond well and are emotionally engaged when they feel their organisation invests in their learning. Building a learning culture serves as a clear indicator to the employees that they’re really valued. It also boosts their self-confidence and brings them to take initiative and walk the extra mile willingly.

• Saves on new hires by enabling “promoting” from within

It’s significantly costlier to recruit a new employee than to retain and train an existing one. So, when new skills are needed, what’s the most cost-effective way to acquire them? Train, promote, and hire from within the organisation.

• Challenges rigid opinions and behaviours

Challenging rigid thinking and behaviours improves team performance even as it reduces close-mindedness and “silo” thinking. Learning is also a good antidote for groupthink, which comes disguised as consensus, but inflicts great harm on companies with tremendous growth potential stalling their progress.

• Inculcates a “growth mindset” in your employees

Dr Carol Dweck, a research psychologist at Stanford University, found that individuals with a ‘growth mindset’- people who embrace challenges, strive to learn, and uncover ways to develop new skills - build more skills, work harder, perform better, respond and adapt to change better than those with a ‘fixed’ mindset.

• Gives your organisation a ‘growth mindset’ too

An organisation is a collection of two or more people working for a common purpose. Going by this definition, an organisation made up of individuals with a growth mindset will also acquire a growth mindset, which means it’ll have more people that feel valued, avoid organisational politics and fudging, and promote innovation.

• Prepares the organisation, as a whole, for disruptive change

A robust learning culture stresses on and encourages asking questions, observing, and continually acquiring new skills. When a critical mass of employees does this, the organisation, as a whole, can adapt to change, anticipate disruption, and innovate much better it’d otherwise do. Those that don’t… well, find out what really happened to Kodak, Blockbuster, Yahoo, etc…

• Helps everyone keep pace with rapid changes in technology

Technology evolves so rapidly that employees often have to be retrained on new devices, new software and mobile apps, new IT infrastructure, and new social media sites (or new features of existing ones.) On-demand learning specially is helping employees keep up with trends and get up-to-speed on emerging technologies, saving the organisation’s time and money.

• Leads to significant gains in productivity

Needless to mention, learning is a productivity enhancer, specially when it’s directed towards developing practical skills and tips that help people perform their jobs a whole lot better and, in some cases, faster.

• Prepares talented individuals for ‘the next step’

The next step is often a promotion to a leadership position. But someone who is knowledgeable about their work still may not have all the ‘soft skills’ or ‘people skills’ they need to lead right away. But there’s a lot you can do as a leader to give your talent the needed skills.

• Yields a massive ROI in the long term

Throw in all these together, and we would expect an organisation with a true learning culture to adapt to change more easily, innovate more, curb employee turnover, promote the right people to leadership positions faster, and generally be more productive. While most of these might be hard to measure on a day-to-day basis, they are on every CEO’s list of things that they want of their organisation, and with good reason. These represent all the hallmarks of a successful, enduring, and profitable enterprise. It goes without saying in the final reckoning that it’d all yield an enormous ROI.

How to Build a Learning Culture?

To begin with, you can’t really fast-track building a learning culture. It takes a holistic strategy, time and efforts not to mention the important soft skills such as patience, perseverance, empathy, and persuasive communication. How complex building a learning culture is depends, largely, on how learning-oriented your organisation really is. Following are several useful tips that will come in handy for you in developing a learning culture in your organisation.

• Critically review your current learning strategy to discover learning gaps

Some degree of learning and knowledge sharing take place in any organisation with or without an articulate learning strategy. So, assess how it goes currently and identify learning gaps and devise ways bridge them. Also, look into the skill gaps and ask employees what they want to learn.

• Plan what you need and want your employees to learn

Some learning will be organic and informal. But it’s essential to have structured and formalised learning as well. For instance, in product knowledge training, codes of conduct, or onboarding, these should all be planned down to a tee so that your employees can gain the knowledge and skills required.

• Empower subject matter experts

Get the help of subject matter experts to create the necessary learning materials. They could be found from among your managers or even your employees or hired from outside.

• Make training readily accessible

Strive to facilitate a smoother and simpler learning processes whether it happens predominantly online or offline.

• Ensure learning is a top priority from day one

Get your new hires accustomed to learning so that it becomes ingrained in your organisational culture.

• Set aside a time to learn

Left to chance, learning won’t happen in an effective way, so allocate a certain amount of time daily or weekly for your people to focus on learning.

• Experiment with learning methods
• Create a library of resources
• Integrate learning into day-to-day life
• Make a habit of knowledge sharing
• Reward Learning

Use Red Hat Learning Subscription (RHLS) as an Effective Learning Tool

So far, we’ve been talking about building a learning culture in any organisation in any industry. Now we’d like to describe to you how RHSL could be used as an effective learning tool at your IT business. RHLS is a quick, specific and effective learning solution for your IT employees to master Red Hat technologies relating to Linux System Administration, Engineering, and Architecture, DevOps, Virtualisation, Automation, Cyber Security, Container Management, and the likes.

Because information technology is a rapidly evolving field, the other disciplines such as what’s mentioned above too are subject to great change; as a result, continual learning is the only way for your people to stay up to date. RHLS, a highly effective self-paced learning solution that gives your IT employees access to over 50 Red Hat courses that disseminate latest the knowledge in Red Hat technologies.

RHLS Enterprise: A flexible, cost-effective training solution for large teams

With Red Hat Learning Subscription Enterprise, implementation and management can be more effective and the training budget can be stretched for maximum benefit. Users can develop the competencies that will help them develop needed skills more quickly and perform their jobs more capably. With the flexibility to decide how and when they train, users can fit learning into busy schedules and adapt the courses to accommodate different learning styles.

The enterprise bundle offers significant cost savings. Priced at approximately 70% less than individual subscriptions, Red Hat Learning Subscription Enterprise lets three employees acquire technical skills for less than the price of one individual subscription. Additional savings result from the ability to accommodate a large number of users without traveling or taking time away from work. Red Hat Learning Subscription Enterprise is offered in standard or basic subscriptions, which helps you budget for training in one predictable, annual subscription cost.

Also, explore the business value of Red Hat Training and Certification so that you can discover solid research evidence on how Red Hat training and certifications, through RHLS enterprise or otherwise, could benefit your IT business.

When you take all this into account, it becomes amply clear to you that RHLS can be at the heart of the learning culture that you so badly want to cultivate at your IT company.

Why RHLS?

• Technology is always evolving
• New versions are released
• New products are adopted
• The need for product knowledge changes

We, PACE Institute, an award-winning Red Hat Certified Training Partner in Sri Lanka, strive to support the individuals from Sri Lanka and from this region to become Red Hat Certified Linux Professionals and also the organisations from Sri Lanka and this region to accelerate their digital transformation by helping their staff get critical Red Hat Linux competencies required for that. While providing both classroom training and online training for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Certifications and Red Hat Certificates of Expertise, we have also found RHLS to be a valuable remote learning option for both individuals and organisations.